Monday, 1 October 2018

Zolitude


My parents still live in a Soviet suburb halfway between here and the sea: Zolitude, where last year a roof collapsed and killed forty shoppers as they weighed their options for dinner.

Zolitude is a fairly slim volume of fourteen short stories, but still, it takes some time to get through this book. Author Paige Cooper doesn't give anything away for free, and readers are rewarded for their patience: while most of these tales focus on love and relationships (in often surprising ways), they all have complex and unclear structures, often confusing until the last few sentences. The stories are set in strange cities (or on a strange planet) far away, sometimes involve an alt-history or a post-crash future, and more than once, I was surprised to discover stories in which fantastical creatures just happen to roam our earth. This is high level, interesting writing, and at their cores, these stories have a kernel of keen observation about human relationships. I can see that Cooper's style might be an acquired taste (and, indeed, I had trouble understanding a few of these stories myself), but for the most part, this collection suited me just fine.

The first story, Zolitude, so impressed me that I hoped the entire book would be filled with such gems. I liked the confusion of not knowing where the story was set (eventually figuring out it is in Latvia), I liked the emotional pull of the lesbian main character, and I kept marking passages that intrigued me with their language:
• The devils in these nightmares are toothed whales, white and black and also just white, in water so cold it's blue with its own light. They seize our ankles with their sawteeth and whirlpool us down the nightling league to the river bottom. They hold us there.

• Everyone starves for the love of men, even men themselves.

• The vendors stay open all night, even through the grave-bottom of winter.
And then the second story, Spiderhole, was completely different; with a hyper-masculine male main character; an alcoholic war vet who leads us to a fascinating place that puts a new twist on true history:
Dusty sheathes himself in khaki against the sun and wind, kisses his wife and her girl, and drives inland on one red, day-long shot of road. On the second morning, he passes over the Annamites, his bike roaring in second up the grade, gravel hawking off the hairpins into the blue-black, the dipterocarp sea, the pit he's climbing out of. The road is empty except for potholes and a single, starved Honda driven by a kid in a dirty t-shirt, hunting rifle slashed across his shoulders. No animal life – it's been devoured. On his right, over the scarp, the mountains are imbricate rows of corroded teeth. The place is a national park now, all of it. Protected. From who? It blows his fucking mind.
(This is the opening passage and by now I knew to Google “the Annamites” to figure out where we were, and looked up “dipterocarp” and “imbricate” while I was at it.) Loved everything about that story, and also the third, Ryan & Irene, Irene & Ryan, and its look at the relationship between a female entertainment lawyer and the DJ she's promoting (and the female DJ's abusive ex). Again, I was intrigued by Cooper's style of description:
The sun on Irene is green-gold through the leaves. Her freckles look like worry scattered under deep-socketed, apologetic eyes. She could be a sickish art-gallery clerk, undiagnosable without health care; or some court sorceress tasked with sitting awake all night to keep the cats and night hags off a happier woman's baby. I love Irene. It's a side effect of looking at her.
There are some weird sciencey stories (Thanatos features both experimental surgeries and time travel; Record of Working is in a strange future, searching for new power sources; Pre-Occupants shows us the first couples sent to terraform Mars), and there are some stories that start off in normal places and take some weird twists (The Emperor, Moriah, and The Roar all feature mythical beasts), and another story, Retirement (about the post-sports life of an Olympic gold medal skiier) is set entirely in our world and is a credible insight into how that transition would be a struggle. I don't know that I entirely understood The Tin Luck, I was a little underwhelmed by both Slave Craton(about an obsessively in love park ranger who warns of a big earthquake) and Vazova on Love (about an affair between spies), but I was thoroughly entranced by La Folie and its tale of an alternative present in which parents can send one of their children into indentured servitude for the benefit of another of their children:
The water is lax. The sky opens up in mounds of mauve and saffron. The boat's engine churns against crowds of little wavelets. They pass lush clumps of greenery, possibly tethered, possibly roving. Audrey puts her hands under her shirt. Her belly is hot. Her hands are numb as a stranger's. The island is its own horizon of foliage clouds. The dawn behind shades it into shapes. This boat is a rescue boat. The sun exists. She can see it. She squints against it. She is the one being rescued, now, finally.
Even when confusing, I always found the writing in Zolitude to be intriguing and I am delighted that its inclusion on the Giller Prize's longlist for this year prompted me to pick it up; I ultimately found this collection to be much more interesting than some of the titles that made it to the shortlist, but who am I to judge?



The 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist: 

Paige Cooper: Zolitude
Patrick DeWitt: French Exit
Esi Edugyan: Washington Black
Sheila Heti: Motherhood
Emma Hooper: Our Homesick Songs
Tanya Tagaq: Split Tooth
Kim Thúy: Vi
Joshua Whitehead: Jonny Appleseed


*Won by Washington Black (but I would have given it to Songs for the Cold of Heart)


The 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for English-language Fiction Finalists:

Zolitude by Paige Coope
Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage
The Red Word by Sarah Henstra
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

* Won by The Red Word. I think the GGs picked a really strong list this year and I am pleased that Henstra won.
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